Blindsight

by Adriane Leigh

  “Me too,” I whispered and was about to kiss his lips before he interjected.

  “Can you walk in those things?” Hunter glanced down at my feet.

  “Not really.” I frowned and cursed myself for forgoing the wedges I usually preferred.

  “Then hop on.” Hunter turned and with his palms rasping my sensitive thighs, heaved me onto his back. I laughed and smacked at his shoulders, squealing for him to let me down but he held on tightly.

  “Thank God you didn’t have far to go,” I laughed and smoothed the hem of my dress when he put me down a minute later outside of a local diner. The smell of frying foods filled my nostrils and left my stomach grumbling for carbs and protein.

  “A Sam’s and two deluxe in the back!” Hunter called and held two fingers up to the oversized man behind the counter. He gave a slow nod as Hunter bee-lined for a corner booth covered in red vinyl, the table black and white checks with chipped corners.

  “I love this place.” Hunter fiddled with a napkin at the table after unbuttoning the silky lapel of his suit.

  “They seem to know you.”

  “I’ve been coming since I was a kid. Grew up in this neighborhood. My step-dad brought me here a lot, always doing business meetings.” He shrugged and then nodded to the waiter when he set down two glasses of water.

  “He brought you along for business meetings?” I asked, anxious to learn more about Hunter’s family.

  “Once in a while. This place was sort of a safe zone for me. I was bullied a lot.” He rubbed at the back of his neck.

  “I can’t picture you being bullied,” I commented, a little surprised at the admission from the brawny man across from me.

  “You can’t now, but let’s just say I wasn’t one of those peaked-in-high-school kids. Scrawny and wiry with facial hair that never seemed to quite fill in, that was me.” He quirked a grin and I saw the twinkle of the little boy that had finally gotten his revenge. “But once I graduated, I was determined to bulk up, never get bullied again, so I enlisted in the Army, worked out when I wasn’t patrolling, and came home like this.” He chuckled and rubbed at the now full stubble along his jaw.

  “I bet you were adorable.” I giggled as I put together the picture of the muscled, tattooed gorgeous man before me and the scrawny teen he claimed he’d been. I crossed my legs, my foot brushing against the smooth fabric of his pants, and without words he slipped off my heel and rubbed at the arch of my foot.

  He continued, lost in his story, stating the facts in an unwavering voice. “My mom was murdered by her boyfriend when I was fourteen. But he had a good lawyer and got off with third-degree,” he divulged, and I couldn’t keep my eyebrows from dashing up into my hairline before he continued. “She’d only been with him a few months, high on anything they could get their hands on most of the time, and he drank on top of it. It was rough. He was rough on both of us. He split her lip one morning when he woke up with a hangover and I was watching TV too loud. Left her with a bloody face, and as I cried, he turned and slapped me so hard I flew into a glass coffee table. It shattered. Anti-shatter glass wasn’t around in those days.” He paused. “I’ve got scars from it.” He rubbed at his knuckles. “The day I turned sixteen, I used a fake ID to get tattoos to cover them. They haunted me. I had to turn them into something meaningful,” he finished as I traced the roughened knuckles and bronzed skin covered in ink and raised flesh.

  “What do the Roman numerals mean?” I said as I looked at them, anxious to decipher the depths this man carried in his heart.

  “The day she died.”

  “And that was meant to replace it with a happier memory?” I asked, confused and heartbroken for him.

  “It wasn’t so much about creating a happier memory as it was a lesson. Learning from the past.” I tilted my head, urging him on without words. “She was an addict, she hid it well, but there were always empty pill bottles and dusty white credit cards with maxed limits lying around the house. That’s why she couldn’t leave him. Too poor, too addicted, too broken.”

  “It’s hard to leave. Manipulation, guilt…and abusive men prey on broken women,” I said, all too familiar with my own childhood story of verbal abuse and emotional neglect.

  “I blamed her for so many years. The stuff I saw on the streets wasn’t great, but in a lot of ways, it was better than how I’d grown up the first fourteen years. I’m glad I got out alive.” He trailed off quietly.

  “So did you live with a family member?” I probed a little further, sensing his urge to chat.

  “No one to take me.” He shrugged. “Well, there was someone looking out for me, but I learned pretty quickly that everyone has selfish interests.” His eyes darted away then, and his elegant fingers began tapping out a nervous rhythm on the Formica, another expression of the boundless energy contained within him that had no outlet when he wasn’t shooting.

  I smiled and calmed his tapping knuckles on the table with my own. I twined my fingers in his, softly, briefly, but the connection was strong, surging through my blood as if to his, the energy radiating and thrumming between us like a live wire. The snapping and electrical charges present with the barest touch, the power and heat contained a promise.

  Hunter settled then, his eyes cast to mine and a slow grin lifted one side of his face. That grin, that one that left my stomach twisting and my thighs shaking. He stilled his movements on the arch of my foot and rested my calf across his thigh.

  “You are a terrible flirt,” I finally blurted, the only thing running in my head.

  Hunter’s eyes arched in surprise before we both fell into a fit of laughter. “I have to say, I have not heard that one before,” he said as his fingers ran their magic over my arch. “You remind me of my mom.”

  “Why?”

  “She called everyone on their bullshit.” His grin widened. “That was my favorite part about her.”

  “So you come by the straight-talk honestly?” I smiled and ran my pale fingertips between his marked ones.

  “I guess.” That easy grin fell across his face and at once the mood lifted, the conversation diverted. I wanted to know more, so much more. I wanted to ask about the phone calls, his family, the tattoos. And I was desperate to read the road map of his scars.

  Our first course arrived then, which turned out to be a martini glass brimming with ice cream and fudge and sprinkles of pistachio. I would imagine it was my wide eyes peering at it from different angles that had Hunter filling the warm space with his decadent laughter. “So much for that diet,” I said when Hunter scooped a large piece and forced it across the table. “And I thought you didn’t do simple carbs?” I arched an eyebrow.

  His laugh heated my insides with pleasure. “Lose a single pound and I’ll tan your hide. Now eat.” He indicated with a spoon and I parted my lips, swallowing the creamy hand-churned dessert. “Fucking fantastic, right?” He grinned knowingly and I burst into laughter.

  “Fucking fantastic.” I nodded. “I’m not sure how I feel about dessert before dinner, though.” I scooped up my spoon and dug in with him. Watching his sexy lips wrap around the cold metal disarmed me.

  “Not before, with. We’re having dessert and dinner simultaneously. It’s all about the salty-sweet mix.” He turned and caught the waiter’s attention. “Watch.” He set the spoon down and smiled pleasantly as the waiter set fries and greasy cheeseburgers in front of us. “Onion rings, too!” Hunter added as the waiter walked away, a smile on his face. Hunter had that feel-good effect on people.

  “Got it, Clu,” the waiter called.

  I chuckled and shook my head. “Clu?” I took another delicious scoop of the ice cream.

  “Old nickname.” He intercepted my second spoonful of the sugary sundae. The waiter appeared a moment later with a plate of fried rings.

  “Weird nickname.”

  “Aren’t they all?” He shrugged my comment off again. “Try the cheeseburger, fucking amazing,” he said before taking a bite of the burger. I grinned then and
decided to let him keep the secrets he needed. I sure had more than enough of my own.

  An hour later, after dining on cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings, and a Sam’s deluxe sundae, Hunter hailed us a cab, rattling off his address. I guess I was his tonight. I shifted in my seat, anxious to get back to his house, back to being just us.

  “Got something to tell me?” Hunter crooned, as his palm slid up my knee and circled the tendons there.

  “No.” I shook my head as words like “love” sat painfully on the tip of my tongue.

  “Will you come home with me?”

  “I didn’t know I had a choice.” I shifted, my thighs rubbing together, my agitation growing because I felt like I was playing a game with this man, this back and forth sexual cat and mouse that had me ready to burst. Why hadn’t he had sex with me yet? Was that connected to his secret too, or could he be a genuinely nice guy that believed in courting a woman before fucking her? I could hardly imagine a man like that still existed.

  I sucked in a slow breath when the car pulled to a stop. “You always have a choice.” He clasped my hand in his after we’d stepped out of the cab. “I just like to take it away from you once in a while.”

  My world crashed and burned. The spinning stopped, the thoughts ceased, and I was here, just me and him. Without words, he let me take the lead up the stairs of his brownstone, through the entry and down the hallway and up the stairs to his room. I was conscious of his eyes on me, his hand wrapped in my own at my back.

  “What now?” I nearly choked when I reached the door to his room.

  “The anticipation is killing me,” Hunter growled in my ear as his hands worked their way up my thighs and hovered at the hem of my dress. He teased the sequined edge, flipping it between his fingers.

  “It’s killing me too,” I said, unable to form any other words.

  “Good,” he said, before my arm stretched to flip the switch to brighten the dark room.

  “Leave it.” His hands worked up my thighs and my heart lodged in my esophagus.

  “Bend over.”

  thirteen

  I did as I was told, without hesitation or second thought. I’d been waiting for the moment to finally feel Hunter buried inside me. I’d dreamed of it, my eyes closing at night imagining being in his strong arms, his legs wrapped around me, owning me, using all that pent up energy contained within him.

  I felt Hunter’s hands slip up my thighs, raising the skirt of my dress as I bent over the leather bench at the end of his bed waiting, my breaths shallow with anticipation.

  “So fucking beautiful,” he uttered as he raised the sequined fabric to reveal my ass to the chilled air of the room. I squirmed and waited for his touch, something more, more of anything. His fingers, his tongue, his cock. I wanted to feel him everywhere.

  I wiggled, frustration growing, and holding my muscles tense when his deep chuckle filtered through the silent room.

  “Anxious, Princess?” His thumbs splayed across my ass cheeks, then kneaded and pulled, causing the cool air to brush against my hot pussy and making me grow wetter with every passing moment.

  “You’ve been waiting for this?” he hummed, leaning across my back, his teeth catching the zipper that ran down the back of my dress and pulling it down one inch at a time. With my breathing ragged, the dress fell to the floor in a whoosh of fabric and left me standing in a strapless bra and nothing else.

  I felt him bend to his knees behind me, his hands still kneading at my ass, his warm breath now dancing across the backs of my thighs, arousal pulsing and surging between my legs. My hips bucked of their own accord, and with agonizing slowness, I felt Hunter’s warm tongue run up the slit of my soaked pussy. He flicked and dragged his tongue across my hardened clit, and I clutched at the cushions.

  Hunter continued to lick and dive with his tongue, swirling and then teasing with light nips and licks, pulling away just as I was on the edge.

  “Let me hear you. I want to know how it makes you feel to have my tongue in your hot pussy,” he grunted, and his hands fisted tighter, my hips pushing and biting into the arm of the couch, pleasure surging as he thrust two fingers into my pussy and curled them, hitting a tight bundle of nerves deep inside that sent me groaning and moaning without reason or care for why. I slumped, breathless, thighs shaking.

  “Not done yet, Princess.” He ushered me across the length of the bench at the foot of his king bed. With my knees firmly seated on the cushion and ass in the air, I turned and watched as he shrugged out of the tux jacket and unbuttoned the crisp dress shirt with quiet precision.

  “Close your eyes,” he ordered, his eyes boring into mine, and I saw the switch then. The lowering of his tone, the heat that burned in his green irises. This was Hunter fucking. Hunter fucking was so much hotter than Hunter shooting, and Hunter behind a camera made my stomach swim.

  I closed my eyes and turned away from him.

  I waited, my breaths slow and measured as the goosebumps raced across my skin. I waited and I fucking waited, every nerve in my body on edge, aware of every shift he made, until finally his fingertips traced the curve of my ass, before both hands wrapped around my wrists and I felt the rough fibers of a rope slipping against my skin.

  “Wait.” I choked and pushed back, waves of anxiety and guilt replacing arousal. As if he hadn’t heard, he continued to wrap the long length of rope around my wrists and up my forearms before he slipped the rope around one tall mahogany bed post.

  My stomach curled and flipped, my arms instinctively pulling back, resisting the control he wanted. “Hunter, wait.” Words burned on my lips like fiery cinnamon drops.

  “What?” he growled and his eyes darted to catch mine.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.” I dreaded the words that hung on my lips. It was the wrong place, the wrong time, but I couldn’t take it any longer.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything.” He tightened the rope with a swift tug and then his palms were back to running the lengths of my arms and down my torso, my hips twisting as my thighs grew slick.

  “There are things you don’t know—”

  “I know more than you think I do, and I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Giant palms jerked my ass against his thick erection beneath the fine fabric of his dress pants. I wiggled and sighed, wanting desperately to get lost in this moment with him, but the guilt had been weighing me down, loading my feet with lead blocks that left me stumbling and moving much too slowly for my own good.

  “I’m—”

  “Shut your mouth, Princess.” The fingers of one hand dug into the flesh of my ass cheek, while a thumb on his other pushed past my lips and into my mouth, forcing me to bite down. “Don’t act so disappointed — I have you right where you like to be.” He leaned across my back, his crisp shirt rough against my cool skin as my arms stretched to hold the pressure of his heavy body. “Without control,” he growled and tightened his hold in my mouth, forcing my head to turn and catch his stare. “I don’t want another word from you until I say so.” His eyes flashed with warning. My pussy clenched and my thighs shifted. He was right, this is exactly where I wanted to be. With him I felt protected in a way I never had. My feelings were barricaded by his imposing voice and giant body. Twisted up in his bonds and helpless, I was finally safe.

  “Answer me.” His thumb loosened its hold at my cheek and slipped out to caress one corner of my mouth.

  I smacked my lips, stretched taut from his warning, and sucked in a shallow breath. “Yes, Sir.” I smiled, my eyes darkening, lids lowered with lust as his eyes shone in the soft rays of moonlight that floated in the window. My wrists burned with the grating fibers, and still my body vibrated and hummed with excitement. I loved the pain, loved the reminder of his control.

  “Good, girl.” He groaned and turned me in one quick move, pinning me beneath him, my wrists pulled taut and stretched above my head. With one hand wrapped at my waist, his head dipped and teeth pulled the cup of my bra aside to bit
e at my aching nipple, tight and puckered from the cool air. I arched and sighed, wrapping my legs around his waist and rubbing my body against his.

  His head dipped, and teeth pulled at my aching nipple, tight and puckered from the cool air. I arched and sighed, wrapping my legs around his waist and rubbing my body against his.

  “Fuck, I don’t know how I stayed away from you for so long,” he whispered between teasing licks at my nipple as his other hand worked the zipper on his dress pants.

  “God,” I sighed as my eyes appraised him. All sharp lines and hard muscle, rippling as his body hovered over me, a few wayward strands of golden hair licking across his forehead.

  “I’ve been dreaming about fucking you,” he ground through clenched teeth, just as the tip of his cock made contact with my heated skin for the first time. A low groan burned from my chest and filled the heated space between us as he worked in slow thrusts, deeper and further each time.

  “So fuck me.”

  “Mmm…” That reckless half smile tilted his lips as my eyes flickered open at his words.

  “Please, Sir.” I begged softly, just as he’d said I would. At my words Hunter’s eyes flickered with danger and he sunk into me in one fierce thrust. He moved with focused ease, and with the lights of Chicago blazing through the windows, Hunter fucked me like a whore for all the city to see. His eyes burned with emerald fire as our gazes locked and he fucked me so hard I thought I may lose my mind. My heels dug into his ass and I itched to run my fingers through his hair and across his golden biceps. “Oh, God…” An orgasm tightened and bunched my muscles, curled my toes, and left me sitting on the edge and so close to ruin.

  “Fuck. You feel better than I fucking dreamed,” Hunter grunted and the raw tone of his voice left me falling off into another world where I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, could only feel my nerves burning up for the first time in so, so long.

  “So fucking beautiful. Your body shaking around mine. Christ, that’s the face I want on camera. Your beautiful face as you cum, hanging on my wall for everyone to see.” Hunter’s hands tightened painfully at my hips as his thrusts grew shallow and quick, his words urging me on. Fingers pulled at the locks of my hair before one hand fisted at the back of my neck. With his forehead against mine, his heavy pants mingling with mine, he came in long slow groans that echoed out of his chest and that I felt to my very core. His body held lean and rigid above me, I ached to run my fingertips across his back, following the cut lines of his torso and his scars like Braille under my fingertips.